tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post8169405447508477671..comments2023-11-03T08:02:25.369-04:00Comments on AmericanScience: A Team Blog: Henry David Thoreau: Scientist, Capitalist, Land SurveyorDavid Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-90823956863256001512015-07-22T07:22:57.625-04:002015-07-22T07:22:57.625-04:00Thank you so much for sharing a lot of this good c...Thank you so much for sharing a lot of this good content! I am looking forward to seeing more!<br /><a href="http://lindersurveying.com/" rel="nofollow">Land Surveying in Alabama</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13926222517269876236noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-29608673133705260132014-12-11T11:43:42.132-05:002014-12-11T11:43:42.132-05:00My grandpa was a surveyor. I don't know much a...My grandpa was a surveyor. I don't know much about the profession myself, but the topic catches my eye. I hadn't known that Thoreau was a surveyor. It's really cool to learn more about famous people like that. They seemed to do more with their lives than a lot of celebrities do now. <a href="http://PLSurvey.com" rel="nofollow"> http://PLSurvey.com</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08816503075485660516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-32417932239756613852014-12-01T15:37:16.331-05:002014-12-01T15:37:16.331-05:00I love Thoreau's poetry. I had no idea he was ...I love Thoreau's poetry. I had no idea he was considered a land surveyor! I guess it makes sense because he spent so much time in the wilderness for his thinking and writing. I wonder if Emerson is also considered a land surveyor. Thanks for sharing! http://www.burgetassociatesinc.com Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15261752851824059021noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-20978552893927653842014-07-11T10:31:14.844-04:002014-07-11T10:31:14.844-04:00Thanks for the post. I was actually looking for so...Thanks for the post. I was actually looking for something current on land surveyors, but instead I got a history lesson. Thanks for posting, because it was a really interesting subject. I do enjoy American history. <a href="http://www.asam1.com/asamservices.html" rel="nofollow"> http://www.asam1.com/asamservices.html</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01511855752218553752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-41258042510510684472013-03-11T03:28:28.950-04:002013-03-11T03:28:28.950-04:00Nice blog about the construction site and the poin...Nice blog about the construction site and the points which are described are also interesting to read. Thanks for the blog post.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04463667557479859153noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-23790471566333213442013-01-25T06:00:20.510-05:002013-01-25T06:00:20.510-05:00I recently came across your blog and have been rea...I recently came across your blog and have been reading along.I'm impressed. You're truly well informed and very intelligent. <br /><br />You wrote something that people could understand and made the subject intriguing for everyone. I'm saving this for future <br /><br />use.Land surveyor Birmingham,ALabamahttps://plus.google.com/100133195424286773416/about?hl=ennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-11647727596943951552012-11-12T22:33:12.163-05:002012-11-12T22:33:12.163-05:00Let me say a word for the politics of methods!
Da...Let me say a word for the politics of methods!<br /><br />Dan, I understand you might mean "politics" in a more specific/less theoretical sense, but it seems to give up too much to say that methods might not entail politics or political effects all their own. <br /><br />We should at least be as open to that as we are to Lee's retreat to "Boundaries often do." The idea that methods have a politics might reveal new layers of your point about Thoreau's internal tensions!Hankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02841787256060612291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-8229847874214385612012-11-12T22:12:34.223-05:002012-11-12T22:12:34.223-05:00Thanks for your helpful and enriching comments, Da...Thanks for your helpful and enriching comments, Dan, and thanks for reminding me of Slotten's and Jansen's books. I knew I'd forgotten a few things, but couldn't recall them. I like Slotten's book, and I've wanted to pick up Jansen's. I will now. <br /><br />You're right: survey methods don't have politics. Boundaries often do. I really like Chura's--or is it Thoreau's?--point that surveying precision could be liberatory, as in the case of J. Brown. <br /><br />I have little doubt that my second archival project will bring me back into the 19th century. My current historical addiction: Hoboken's Elysian Fields as a site of the HOTeES. There is so much in the 19th century that beckons me, while the 20th century, in my own home field, the history of technology, frankly feels constipated. Leehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14164091550633430973noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-54148668974795249322012-11-12T06:47:09.964-05:002012-11-12T06:47:09.964-05:00Lee, this is fascinating! I think I might have to ...Lee, this is fascinating! I think I might have to look into Chura's book. I've often used Thoreau as an example in my environmental history class of the way individuals live in tension with themselves and their convictions. Thoreau as a surveyor gained the capacity to walk wherever he wanted, while in the process strengthening the boundaries that he generally abhorred. This passage from "Walking" always gets me:<br /><br />"For my part, I feel, that with regard to Nature, I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world, into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.(8) Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will o’ the wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor fire-fly has shown me the cause-way to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The Walker in the familiar fields which stretch around my native town, sometimes finds himself in another land than is described in their owners’ deeds, As it were in some far away field on the confines of the actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set up appear dimly still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the glass; and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace, and it will have no anniversary." (more <a href="http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking3.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>)<br /><br />A "border-life" indeed! (I don't think I ever realized that a "border-life" is probably an old surveyor's pun...)<br /><br />The stuff on the Coast Survey is particularly interesting. There are some other studies on the Coast Survey that do a bit of what you're pointing towards, including <a href="http://books.google.de/books/about/Patronage_Practice_and_the_Culture_of_Am.html?id=t5V72iJADyEC&redir_esc=y" rel="nofollow">Slotten's book</a> and a recent biography (kinda) of <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo11364351.html" rel="nofollow">Bache by Axel Jansen</a>. Jansen plays up the argument that Bache intended to create a republican, scientific citizenry. That Thoreau might have been directly influenced by Coast Survey interactions strengthens that argument a great deal--I want to know about that connection the most. But Jansen also focuses on the nationalism of the Coast Survey's methods. Thoreau shows how the same scientific methods that led Bache toward a version of manifest destiny thinking could be embraced by man who had no particular qualms with leaving a union that supported the immorality of slavery. Survey methods don't have a politics.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05217832960135325575noreply@blogger.com